HANDBOOK
Of
Practices and Procedures
Friends Meeting of Washington
of the Religious Society of Friends
2111 Florida Avenue NW
Washington DC 20008-1912
(202) 483-3310/voice
(202) 483-3312/Fax (8-4 weekdays)
http://www.quakersdc.org
Friends Meeting of Washington Statement of Purpose
The purpose of the Friends Meeting of Washington, D.C., is to foster simple spiritual worship and such activities in various fields of service as Friends may feel themselves called to undertake. As a help to these ends we purpose to maintain a place of worship where Friends and others who are like-minded may meet in religious fellowship and seek through a waiting worship the renewal of their spiritual lives and the quickening of their powers of service to the Divine and to their fellow human beings.
Adopted in 1931; two words modified to make gender neutral
CONTENTS
NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE HANDBOOK 5
HISTORY OF FRIENDS MEETING OF WASHINGTON 5
ORGANIZATION AND BUSINESS PROCEDURE 9
MEMBERSHIP 10
Application for Membership 10
Sojourners 10
Transfers 10
Attenders 11
Membership of Children 11
Isolated Members 11
Resignations 11
Discontinuation or Termination of Membership 12
MEETING FOR BUSINES 13
Junior Meeting for Business 13
OFFICERS OF THE MEETING 13
Presiding Clerk 13
Recording Clerk 14
Alternate Clerk 14
Co-clerks 14
Recorder 14
Treasurer and Assistant Treasurer 14
Financial Coordinator 15
SPECIAL POSITIONS 15
Historians 15
MEETING STAFF 16
BOARD OF TRUSTEES 17
STANDING COMMITTEES 18
Finance and Stewardship 20
Healing and Reconciliation 21
Hospitality 21
Library 22
Marriage and Family Relations 22
Membership 22
Ministry and Worship 23
Nominating 24
Peace and Social Concerns 24
Personal Aid 25
Personnel 25
Property 25
Records and Handbook 26
Religious Education 27
COMMITTEE OF CLERKS 27
SPECIAL COMMITTEES 28
Ad Hoc Committee on Special Events 29
Child Safety Committee 29
Garden Committee 30
Hunger and Homelessness Task Force 30
Information Technology Committee 30
Mary Jane Simpson Scholarship Fund Committee 30
Mary Walcott-Lucy Foster Educational Fund Committee 31
Search Committee 31
Senior Center Committee 31
AFFILIATIONS WITH RELATED ORGANIZATIONS 31
Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1-D 33
American Friends Service Committee 33
Baltimore Yearly Meeting 33
Council of Churches of Greater Washington 34
Friends Committee on National Legislation 34
Friends General Conference 34
Friends House 34
Friends Nonprofit Housing, Inc. 34
Friends United Meeting 35
Friends Wilderness Center 35
National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund 35
Right Sharing of World Resources 35
School for Friends 35
William Penn House and Washington Quaker Workcamps 35
INTEREST GROUPS AND FELLOWSHIPS 36
Camp Catoctin Retreats 36
Clearness Committees 36
Inquirers Class 36
Spiritual Friendships/Formation 36
Spiritual Journeys Meditation Group 37
Young Adult Friends 37
One-time Workshops or Seminars 37
UNIONS OF MARRIAGE OR COMMITMENT UNDER THE CARE OF THE MEETING 37
IN TIME OF DEATH 39
RECORDS 39
RELATIONS WITH BALTIMORE YEARLY MEETING 40
Responsibilities to Baltimore Yearly Meeting 40
REVISION AND MAINTENANCE OF THE HANDBOOK 41
APPENDIX
BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA A-2
SCHEDULES A-3
GUIDANCE REGARDING LETTERS OF APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP A-5
PRINCIPLES OF MEMBERSHIP A-6
GUIDELINES FOR DISCONTINUATION OF MEMBERS OUT OF COMMUNICATION A-7
DUTIES OF COMMITTEE CLERKS A-8
ANNUAL REPORTS FROM COMMITTEES TO MONTHLY MEETING A-10
ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS A-11
NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE HANDBOOK
This Handbook is intended to supplement Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice[1] and to be used in conjunction with it. The Faith and Practice, parts I, “Faith,” and II, “The Queries,” present a concise introduction to the spiritual and temporal values of its constituent Meetings, including Friends Meeting of
Washington. Part III, “Practices and Procedures,” in the Faith and Practice, and most of this Handbook, which generally follows the order of the Faith and Practice (Section III-B), present who does what and the commonly accepted ways of doing things to carry out the purposes and corporate leadings of the Meeting. “Tested and established practices in a religious society are as important as are good habits for an individual.... A religious group which has a definite character and yet is open to new incursions of Truth is in a better position than one which stresses outworn traditions or one which so neglects the wisdom of the past embodied in inherited custom as to have become like a man without a memory.” Howard H.
Brinton, Guide to Quaker Practice (1946 and 2006)
This Handbook is intended to “embody inherited custom” by cataloging recommended practices for Friends Meeting of Washington, as changed from time to time by the Meeting for Business. In each section of the Handbook, references are given to the relevant sections of the Faith and Practice, followed by discussion of modifications and idiosyncrasies specific to Friends Meeting of Washington. The appendix to this document includes more detailed guidelines, where appropriate, for operations of specific committees and carrying out specific functions, as well as selected forms and materials used within Friends Meeting of Washington, or lists of such materials that are available in the Resource Documents Notebook (copies kept in the Meeting Office and Library).
HISTORY OF FRIENDS MEETING OF WASHINGTON
Faith and Practice
“Preparative and Allowed Meetings for Worship,” III, A, 3
Historical Sketch,” I, A
The story of the Religious Society of Friends in Washington, District of Columbia, is the story of three Meetings: Washington Preparative Meeting/Alexandria Monthly Meeting (the “Eye Street Meeting”),Washington Monthly Meeting (the “Irving Street Meeting”), and Friends Meeting of Washington (the “Florida Avenue Meeting”). The first, Washington Preparative Meeting, was part of the Hicksite branch of Friends after the Hicksite/Orthodox schism of 1827-28. The second, Washington Monthly Meeting, was established by Orthodox Friends. Members of these two Meetings, in a move toward ending the century-old separation, helped form the third, Friends Meeting of Washington, in 1930.
The story begins at Indian Spring Monthly Meeting.[2] At a Meeting for Business on Twelfth Month 17th, 1802, the following minute was recorded:
The subject relative to Friends in the City of Washington and its vicinity . . . being now revived and Friends again taking the subject weightily under consideration are united in judgment that a benefit may arise to these Friends by indulging them with a Meeting at stated times under the care of a committee of Solid Friends.
Therefore, in 1803, just three years after the federal government moved to the new capital city, Friends began holding meetings for worship in Washington under the care of Indian Spring Monthly Meeting. In 1807 Jonathan Shoemaker, a Quaker miller, gave Friends a lot for a burial ground near the present Adams Mill Road entrance to the National Zoo; native Americans and blacks were also buried there, a practice unusual in those times. Friends completed a meeting house in 1811 on the north side of I Street between 18th and 19th streets Northwest. This Washington Preparative Meeting with forty-two members was transferred in 1817 to the care of Alexandria Monthly Meeting.[3] In 1849 the status of the “Eye Street Meeting” was changed from a Preparative Meeting to an Indulged Meeting, but the Meeting continued under the care of Alexandria Monthly Meeting until 1938. A new larger meeting house with rooms for a school was built on the Eye Street property in 1879-80; the school, which ultimately became the Sidwell Friends School, opened in 1883. The I Street property was sold in 1937, and the last meeting for worship was held there in February 1938.
The history of Orthodox Friends in Washington took a different course after the Hicksite/Orthodox schism of 1827-28. Since Washington Preparative Meeting and Alexandria Monthly Meeting – and Fairfax Quarterly Meeting, to which they belonged – associated with the Hicksite branch, Orthodox Friends in Washington were attached to Baltimore Quarterly Meeting (Orthodox). In 1835 Orthodox Friends held meetings for worship in Washington on First Days in a schoolhouse and on Fifth Days in the house of James Housier, but not long thereafter the Meeting was discontinued. Those Orthodox Friends who came to Washington to work with Freedmen after the Civil War were authorized to establish a Meeting for Worship in 1876 under the care of Baltimore Monthly Meeting (Orthodox).[4] Meetings for Worship were held in rented rooms at 1023 7th Street Northwest from 1877-81, then at 1409 New York Avenue. Washington Monthly Meeting was established in 1899 with twenty-nine members. No sooner had a meeting house been built at First and C streets Northeast than the site was condemned for construction of a Senate office building. In 1906 a meeting house was opened at the northwest corner of 13th and Irving streets Northwest. The “Irving Street Meeting” continued to meet until 1947, when the building, which still stands, was sold to another denomination. Washington Monthly Meeting was officially laid down in 1956, when its remaining members helped establish Adelphi Meeting in suburban Maryland.
Cooperation between the “Eye Street Meeting” and the “Irving Street Meeting” had already begun at the time of the First World War. Then, when Herbert Hoover became the first Quaker president of the United States in 1929, the idea of establishing a cooperative Meeting for Worship in the nation’s capital gained impetus. The two Meetings could not reach unity on supporting this project.
At an adjourned session of Washington Monthly Meeting of Friends held Fourth Month 10th, 1930:
. . . We have considered the matter of the establishment of a cooperative Friends Meeting of Washington, with an earnest desire for Divine Guidance…. It had seemed to many Friends, both in and outside of Washington, that the conditions which obtain here at present make this an opportune time for such an undertaking. That on account of these conditions, such a Meeting would afford greater opportunities for giving the Quaker message; that a unified effort on the part of the two Meetings in Washington would not only be a good example for Friends throughout the country, and in harmony with the present tendency toward Church unity, but also in the interest of Christian fellowship generally.
We recognize with profound regret that we have not a feeling of entire unanimity in this Meeting: some feel that the undertaking at this time and in the manner proposed is unwise, and not conducive to the promotion of permanent Friendly cooperation; others believe that the possibilities are of such value to the Society of Friends as to be paramount to those things which may seem as obstacles to such an undertaking, and to warrant submerging them in the interest of the hoped-for larger establishment.
We would not judge one another; we have mutual respect for these different views. And while it seems that the predominant feeling favors approving the report of the Joint Committee, we fully appreciate what it means to some who have worshiped here for so many years - so long that it seems almost a sacred spot, and who cannot feel that the purpose and the object to be attained will compensate for the sacrifices involved.
We would continue to seek to know the will of Him whom we would serve….
Way opened the following month as each of the two Meetings permitted its members to participate as individuals in forming a new Meeting without prejudice to their existing membership. Quakers throughout the country also gave their support to the new Meeting. Mary Vaux Walcott raised the funds for the purchase of the land on Florida Avenue, and Lucy Wilbur Foster of Westerly, Rhode Island, pledged the money to build the Meeting House. Friends Meeting of Washington was incorporated on June 20, 1930, and the first meeting for worship was held at the “Florida Avenue Meeting” on January 4, 1931.
Friends Meeting of Washington played an important role in the effort to end the Hicksite/Orthodox division at the Yearly Meeting and Quarterly Meeting levels. As an independent Meeting, Friends Meeting of Washington at first did not belong to any Quarterly or Yearly Meeting. Therefore, it wrote its own Discipline, approved in 1938 and revised in 1950.The introduction states:
This meeting in Washington is to provide a place of prayer for all people; that in the dignity and beauty of simplicity it will interpret worship in its essence, and that it will promote real and vital religion…. To love and to interpret Truth; to foster the habit of simple spiritual worship; to find God through worship; and therewith to emphasize the spirit of Christian unity; these are the aims of the Washington meeting…. It accepts members from all branches of Friends, from Independent Meetings, and those not in membership with Friends…. without racial discrimination.
In 1944 Friends Meeting of Washington joined both Baltimore Yearly Meetings, Orthodox and Hicksite. In 1951, Friends Meeting of Washington, Fairfax Quarterly Meeting (Hicksite), and some Monthly Meetings of Baltimore Quarterly Meeting (Orthodox) formed the new united Potomac Quarterly Meeting, which affiliated with both Baltimore Yearly Meetings. Potomac Quarterly Meeting became Potomac Half-Yearly Meeting in 1971. After a lengthy decline, Potomac Half-Yearly Meeting was laid down at its own request by Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 2000.
The consolidation of the two Baltimore Yearly Meetings occurred in 1968, and a unified discipline, Faith and Practice of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, was adopted in 1988. Friends Meeting of Washington, therefore, no longer needed its own Book of Discipline and laid it down in July 1990.
Sources
Benjamin Harrison Branch, Jr., Friends Meetings in the Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Area, 1828–1899, 1985.
Bliss Forbush, A History of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1972.
Friends Meeting of Washington, Seeking a Sense of the Meeting: A History of the Friends Meeting of Washington, 1972-1992, Columbia, MD: Quaker Heron Press, 2010.
–––, Friends Meeting of Washington, Anniversary Essays: Celebrating 75 Years at Friends Meeting of Washington, Columbia, MD: Quaker Heron Press, 2010.
Phebe R. Jacobsen, Quaker Records in Maryland, Publication No. 14, The Hall of Records Commission, State of Maryland, Annapolis, 1966.
Carroll Kenworthy, History of Third and Fourth Decades of Friends Meeting of Washington 1952–1972, 1975.
Sina M. Stanton and Julia Rouse Sharpless, Friends Meeting of Washington, Background and Origin, 1965.